Washington – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that Washington and Tehran have begun direct talks on Iran’s nuclear program, in a surprise move after Iranian officials had repeatedly dismissed calls for bilateral negotiations. “We’re having direct talks with Iran, and they’ve started,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “It’ll go on Saturday. We have a very big meeting, and we’ll see what can happen.”
Trump did not provide details on the talks but added, “I think everybody agrees that doing a deal would be preferable.” The announcement marks a dramatic shift in tone after months of escalating rhetoric and regional instability. Trump’s earlier warnings of military action against Iran raised alarm across the Middle East following active conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon, Israeli-Iranian skirmishes, a change of leadership in Syria, and military strikes on Yemen.
Iran had earlier dismissed Trump’s public calls for direct negotiations, saying it would not be coerced into talks, though it did not rule out indirect dialogue. On March 7, Trump said he had written to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to propose talks, a gesture Tehran did not publicly acknowledge at the time.
During his first term in office, Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a multilateral agreement under which Iran agreed to curb its nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump also reinstated sweeping U.S. sanctions that heavily impacted Iran’s economy.
Since the U.S. withdrawal, Iran has significantly exceeded the JCPOA’s limits on uranium enrichment, prompting renewed concerns among Western powers, who accuse Tehran of seeking nuclear weapons capabilities. Iran maintains its nuclear program is solely for civilian purposes.
No official comment was immediately available from Iranian authorities on the latest announcement. The development could signal a potential thaw in U.S.-Iran relations, though any talks are expected to be fraught with deep mistrust and complex geopolitical stakes.
